


Foreign soil in another country.

by thatwhichweare



Category: Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: Hotels, Loneliness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 17:32:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/587941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatwhichweare/pseuds/thatwhichweare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's alone in a foreign country. He pines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foreign soil in another country.

**Author's Note:**

> This sounded better when I first wrote it, as all things do. Hope it's still alright. 
> 
> I do adore these two. 
> 
> Thanks to dispatch_boxing over at lj for the beta.

It’s rather strange really. One would think that growing older meant becoming more sleep-prone but Peter suffers from bouts of insomnia instead. Perhaps it’s because he’s has become more settled in his ways. Thinning cotton sheets that have suffered too many rounds in the washing machine. The familiar bulk and scent of Alistair sleeping next to him. A warm back to cling on to.

He realises with a vague sense of horror that he actually needs these things.

Only one thing to do then. He picks up the phone.

“Peter, I was in the middle of surgery.”

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding sorry at all.

“What time is it there?”

“Three.”

“Go to sleep, Peter,” Alistair says, sounding fond, worried and slightly exasperated at the same time. His voice seems tiny through the speaker.

“I miss you.” He’s in one of those ubiquitous rooms that make up a four star hotel in another anonymous city. The view out the window is similar to the one he saw a month ago: bright lights in tall office buildings that stay on through the night, and probably never go off. There are no longer distinguishing features in the skyline, iconic buildings that that tell you: you’re in our country because we have this building. And it’s the only one in the world.

Now it’s just another jungle with dead trunks of steel and glass.

“You’ll be home tomorrow.”

“I know. I just wanted to....”, he trails off. Alistair sighs. And it sounds like a rush of static over the hiss and crackle of an international call. Peter spots a crease in the sheets and smooths it down, feeling the weave of the thick cotton between his fingers.

“I know. It’s alright. Rest well.”

He listens to the sound of Alistair breathing quietly over the phone and lays his head on the pillow. There is a click on the line, then a single continuous note.

He flicks off the light and slides gingerly under the sheets. The cold is making his bones ache.

In his younger days, Peter used to idolise this lifestyle. Every month a new country, setting foot on foreign soil. Then he realised that he wasn’t allowed the time he needed to find the essence of this alien place, something that he had always looked forward to in his former years. Life was always pushing him on - to the next city and the next and the next.

Another 17 hours till he’s home.

Contrary to popular belief, his home didn’t look like an interior designer’s photograph: a filled room, noticeably uninhabited.

Human beings weren’t designed to live in rooms like that. Homes were never meant to look like that either. What they actually looked like was this; A bed with another warm body in it. A small stack of unwashed plates languishing in the sink. A cup of tea, long cold, sitting on the windowsill. Books haphazardly jammed into overfull shelves. A pile of muddy shoes beside the door.

But that, perhaps, was precisely the point.


End file.
